1. Field of the Disclosure
Aspects of the present disclosure are directed to implantable medical devices, more particularly to implantable medical devices configured to occlude vessels, cavities, appendages, or the like, within a body, and deployment methods associated therewith.
2. Description of Related Art
A variety of devices and/or techniques, along with materials for and methods of manufacturing such devices, have been developed to occlude a vessel or an opening in an organ (e.g., heart) of a patient.
Such devices, however, may not be particularly suited to address specific physiological conditions such as, e.g., occlusion of the left atrial appendage (LAA), in order to reduce the risk of embolisms when the patient is undergoing atrial fibrillation. During atrial fibrillation, the left atrial appendage may be a significant source of the undesirable formation of thrombus-embolis. Also, occlusion of the left atrial appendage by surgical techniques may not always be possible and/or advisable. Further, some such devices applied to occlude the left atrial appendage may sometimes be at risk of being undesirably expelled from the left atrial appendage due to, e.g., forces generated by atrial fibrillation. In addition, some such devices may be configured so as to undesirably prevent some subsequent alternate treatments of the condition such as, e.g., ablation therapy for atrial fibrillation.
As such, there exists a need for an occlusion device and associated deployment method capable of addressing the above-noted and other factors involved in therapies for atrial fibrillation of the left atrial appendage and/or other vessels, cavities, appendages, or the like, within the body.